“It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”
She clenched her fists at her sides. Either that or batter at him like a madwoman. She loved him more than her life. And at this moment, if one of his pistols had been in reach, she’d happily have put a bullet through his thick skull. “So these last days mean nothing? You can’t expect me to believe that. You’ve found happiness in my arms, Gideon. Don’t ever lie about that.”
The skin on his face tightened. She braced to hear him say the words that turned her dream of love into a travesty.
His throat worked as he swallowed and he avoided her gaze. “I should never have touched you. It was wrong. It was cruel. The fact that I can’t stay away from you is no excuse. It’s only an indictment of my own damnable weakness. You should curse me with your every breath. One day you will. Even if we take the sensible course and part now.”
He blamed himself for what happened but couldn’t deny the bond between them. She should find that reassuring, but she knew how obstinate he was. Obstinacy had kept him alive in India. How tragic that obstinacy now made him surrender his chance of happiness. And hers. He tried to do the right thing, the noble thing, but all he did was condemn them both to a lifetime of loneliness.
Charis had prayed love would wash away the poison of Rangapindhi. She saw now her prayers hadn’t been answered.
Her voice rang with resentment. “You’re such a fool, Gideon.”
“One of us has to keep a clear head without getting lost in the romance of it all,” he said with wounding sarcasm.
He wanted her to let him go to perdition in peace. Well, he’d picked the wrong wife if he expected her consent to that. Still, only the knowledge that he loved her, however much he wished he didn’t, kept her fighting. This battle was dangerous—it could destroy both of them.
Her nails dug deep into her palms, the slight sting nothing compared to the way he lacerated her heart with his stubborn rejection. He was the cleverest man she knew. And when it came to her, the stupidest. “We desire each other.”
She saw him consider sidestepping the statement. After these days of passion, she knew him so well. Why didn’t he know her in return?
Something in her face must have convinced him evading the issue wasn’t an option. His lips lengthened in a grim smile. “Yes, there is desire. Enough to set the world on fire. But desire isn’t enough.”
As her false paradise disintegrated around her, she stopped lying to him and to herself. “And there’s love. I love you, and you love me. You told me once.”
A compressed line of guilt and sorrow replaced his smile. “I had no right to say that. I hoped you’d forgotten.”
In a different universe, she would have laughed. Forgotten? Those words were permanently carved on her heart, even if he never said them again. “No chance.”
He looked ill and tired and tense. He looked like a man contemplating the end of the world. “I’ve wronged you so deeply, I can never make recompense.”
Her temper spiked. “How have you wronged me? By showing me a man can be more than a selfish brute? By saving me from rape? By teaching me about ecstasy?”
He was so pale, the mark on his cheek where she’d hit him stood out like a beacon. “By making you believe we could have a life together. By coming to your bed night after night when every principle dictated that I stay away. By tying you with bonds of gratitude…” He spat out the word like a curse. “…you’ll never break, even when you realize what you feel now is illusion.”
She flinched. Surely he didn’t still think her love was sickly hero worship? Not after all they’d shared. The accusation hurt more than acid flung in her face.
She drew a shaky breath and reminded herself that he loved her, hard as it was to believe when she confronted his anger and derision. She fought for her life here. She couldn’t let him defeat her.
“I forget you’re so much older and wiser than I.” Gideon wasn’t the only one with sarcasm in his arsenal.
His expression closed. Once, she’d have retreated from his bristling hauteur. But she’d held him gasping with release too often for the mask of control to dupe her. He wasn’t controlled. He was anguished and angry and desperate.
“After Rangapindhi, I feel a thousand years old.” He spoke sadly, so sadly her heart clenched.
Pity almost made her step down. Almost.
“Gideon, I don’t discount what happened to you.” Her voice became less stride
nt. “I don’t blind myself to what your ordeal cost you. Still costs you. That doesn’t mean your decisions are always correct. Right now, you’re disastrously wrong.”
“You force me to be frank.” A muscle jerked spasmodically in his cheek. He turned and prowled toward the window, where he curled one hand in the curtains. “Let me lay out some facts. If you can bear to contemplate mundane reality.”
“I’m more aware of facts than you are,” she said through tight lips. His mockery stung. “But pray, dazzle me. I wait in humble anticipation.”
Even in profile, she didn’t miss the way his mouth flattened with annoyance. “Very well,” he bit out, every word as precisely cut as a diamond. And just as sharp. “I’m going back to Penrhyn to an arduous, frugal future. Isolated. Lonely. You are the kingdom’s greatest heiress. I’m physically and emotionally incapable of offering you the life you deserve.”
Disbelief rose to choke her. “You reject me because you’re worried I’ll pine for the occasional party?” Her voice began to shake. “You truly believe I’m irreparably shallow, don’t you?”